"I first wrote about what I thought was an interesting e-mail program that showed promise around 1997. It was version 1.0 of The Bat from Moldova. Since then, The Bat (the developers call it "The Bat!" with an exclamation mark) has continued to advance. It has a substantial following in Europe, but it's not well known in the US. That's too bad because it's the best e-mail program available".

Dealermarket, an influential Spanish IT magazine, has published an article by Ritlabs, SRL CEO Maxim Masiutin on the trends of contemporary business communication systems and their usage. The article aims to clarify the current situation and some of the potential risks associated with the use of cloud computing.

Poland's largest and most competent IT-portal has introduced The Bat! v6.3 with RSS to its readers. The new version with RSS module allows to convert the application into a real information hub not only for email, but also for news and novelties from around the world.

Spanish online financial and economic observer diarioabierto.es has published an article on the means of securing email with The Bat! and the damages caused by the usage of the illegal software. Genuine software, private mail servers and email encryption will be repaid in the long term.

German PC Magazin (3/2014) tested The Bat! v6.2.4 and has awarded it the "SEHR GUT" mark. The article reveals The Bat!'s potential and stresses the most useful features which significantly help managing email.

El Economista, a Spanish daily newspaper which focuses on economic, financial and business affairs, has published an article on The Bat! stressing the security topic. The article reveals three main points on making email really secure which are: email encryption, private mail servers and genuine software.

"I'd recommend The Bat! Professional — my replacement for Barca — for those with heavier requirements (multiple email accounts, larger volumes of mail or more control). I was pleased to see that The Bat! was in several ways as intelligent as Barca and in some ways better", wrote Russ Harvey.

The Bat! is a stand-alone email client that lets you configure and customize your inbox. Who knows what they were thinking at Ritlabs, SRL when they were picking a name for their industrial-strength shareware e-mail client? Regardless, The Bat! gives power emailers not only basic email features like filtering rules and POP3 and IMAP support, but also a highly customizable interface for sorting and viewing messages and managing multiple mail accounts.

Have you dashed off a quick email, sent it, and immediately: (a)Realized that you left out something important, (b)Wished that you hadn't sent the message, or (c)Noticed a misspelled word as the application was closing the message and queuing it for delivery? The Bat comes to the rescue with a "delayed send" option and you get to choose the delay: 1 minute, 5 minutes, 23 minutes, 2 hours, 1 day. Whatever. It's your choice. And that's just one small reason why my favorite email program has been The Bat for more than a decade.

If you only send or receive a few emails, and those are of a trivial nature, even the most basic email client will be more than adequate. However, in general, it doesn't take too long to become reliant on emails for keeping in touch. Under these circumstances, it makes sense to use a versatile client that can be configured to your needs.

Our devoted user Mark Geisinger goes on with reviewing The Bat! This time he focuses his attention on The Bat! v4 strengths and weaknesses, speaking of memory usage improvements and other issues. For example, Small Things Count section draws attention to addressee’s name capitalization feature, which is very useful despite being tiny.

The commercial software market for personal email clients is fairly thin. What with the high quality of free products like Thunderbird and the beasts that Microsoft inflicts upon us with Windows (obviously I have an attitude about this), I imagine it requires more than a bit of ingenuity and hard work to create a commercial product that competes well. Ritlabs, SRL has what it takes and it shows well in The Bat!, a superb email client for Windows.